The Issue with Bespoke IoT Initiatives

IoT Integrations Are Underestimated

We have seen a recent trend where companies eager to get IoT projects underway choose to work on bespoke IoT initiatives outside of an overall corporate IoT strategy. They may choose to do so because it seems like a faster path to solving an IoT challenge. Or perhaps they’ve decided to work with a vendor that has promised them the perfect solution.

Bespoke IoT Initiatives Are Problematic

Sometimes companies make these decisions because their customers (or the market in general) is demanding an IoT solution now. And these projects often appear to work, at least in the beginning. A company manages to get their device(s) connected and they stand-up a few pilot customers. There is some positive feedback and then all of a sudden sales wants to start selling it nationally.

But, there is a problem.

IoT Pilots Often Fail To Commercialize If Not Aligned With Corporate Strategy

Because the IoT initiative was developed outside of the corporate strategy, it’s not connected to any of the internal systems. They now need to be able to sell on a large scale, so they may be unable to deliver or even support their-new customers.

When you start looking into what they have to do in order to be sales-ready, IT may tell them it will take a minimum of 6-12 months to do the required integrations. Or maybe the “gotcha” is that their vendor tells you the cloud platform they set up cannot handle the scale of thousands of customers using it – after all, it was only a pilot, right?

IoT Represents A Lot Of Points Of Integration

From manufacturing to new SKUs, to new business models and streams of revenue, to new distribution requirements, to new installation protocols (and possibly new installation skills), to billing systems, to new customer support skills, IoT has a large and significant organizational impact. And these impacts don’t even contemplate what marketing and sales need in order to get the message out, sell the solution, and train new users. IoT adds a lot of fuel to the fire. Not properly managed, it can send businesses into overload, and frankly, this kills a lot of IoT projects.